Adversity can often create opportunity and that, in turn, has the capacity to spawn a positive outcome.
For the West Coast in 2014, the injury toll, particularly through the midfield was damaging. The pain, in the short term, was clear when the team was out-gunned by the best teams in the competition and they were so often exposed in that area.
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With Scott Selwood fighting the injury odds early in the year before finally succumbing to surgery, recruit Elliot Yeo flowing through there and then missing half of the year and developing players like Brant Colledge and Simon Tunbridge also enduring interrupted campaigns, the options were thin.
But out of that situation came the move of Andrew Gaff into the middle.
An elite runner who had shown his wares on the outside, playing predominantly as a wingman, Gaff was thrust into the middle and excelled on the inside, winning his own ball, but then hurting the opposition on the spread.
Confirmation of his growing maturity came tonight when he finished fourth in the John Worsfold Medal.
After a relatively slow start to the season, he finished with a flourish to earn his second top five finish in three seasons. Last year he was eighth, which represents a remarkable start to his career.
While West Coast fans were incensed when the All-Australian selectors left out Brownlow medallist Matt Priddis and key defender Eric Mackenzie, the selection snub began even earlier than that for West Coast Eagles players.
The AFL Players Association, in recent times, has selected a 22 under 22 team where the best players 22-and-under are selected from across the league. As they do with the All-Australian squad, an initial list of 40 players was announced, from which the final 22 was selected.
Not only was Gaff not in the final 22, he didn’t even make the squad. Remarkable really.
Indeed, Jack Darling was the only Eagle considered in the best 22 young guns in the country.
Gaff averaged better than 24 possessions, five marks and 2.5 tackles per game in 2014 and was one of the key instigators in the club’s powerful run home.
He kicked three goals on a couple of occasions and produced the best season of his developing career. That is emphasised by the fact that his tackle and contested possession counts were at a career high.
